Change text on the start button of XP

Have you ever thought of putting your name in place of ‘Start’ in the start button of your XP? Well, don’t just stand and think …do it. By a use of a simple freeware and some change in the registry value you can write anything in place of start. For this you need to make change in the explorer.exe file in the C:\Windows and since explorer.exe is a binary file it requires a special editor. I personally used a freeware utility called Resource Hacker for the purpose. So can you. Download it from http://delphi.icm.edu.pl/ftp/tools/ResHack.zip.

First you need to back up the explorer file. Just copy it to some other location.

o Then start Resource Hacker

o Open the explorer.exe file and navigate you way to String Table

o Expand it and go to no. 37 if you are using XP layout and 38 in case of classic layout

o it select the no. 1033

o the right pane, look for word ‘Start’ in no. 578 or 595 probably

o Change the text to desired text you want

o Compile the script

o Save as in ‘c:\windows’ with some other name and Exit Resource Hacker

o Open Registry

o Navigate your way to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon

o In the right pane click double click ‘Shell’ and change the value data to the name that you used to save the modified explorer.exe

Exit the registry, logoff or restart to see the effect taking place